Artur Madej is a fashion photographer based in Warszawa, Poland.

He collaborates with many designers and celebrities, and his work has been published on several fashion magazines including K-MAG, ELLE (PL), FUSED, VULKAN, Trend Prive, Superior Magazine, HUF, Next Door Models.

I met Artur during a recent course that I run with photographer Chris Ould at the University of the Arts in London; the quality of his work made an impression on us from the very first session, when Artur showed us a small selection of his best shots, especially some taken from his personal projects, which were absolutely bold and full of personality.

During the course we had the chance to see much more of his material: his production was vast, ranging from models look-books to commercial assignments, from editorial projects to corporate-looking portraits, as it often happens when photographers are at the beginning of their careers. 
All of his images were technically perfect, his use of light was sound, his framing, eye for colours, relationship skills were extremely good, with an impressive number of above-the-average shots for such a young photographer. You could see how reliable his hand was, all across different works.

But again, what was really standing out for us were his personal projects, where Artur had somehow freed himself from tradition, deja vues and constrictions and had tried something absolutely new and personal. In these projects, his style was experimental, a bit rough on the edges and very, very contemporary. Something you wish to see more, for sure.

We had a look together at his website; understandably, with such a vast production, his homepage portfolio was very long, gathering the best shots of both commercial assignments and lookbooks, with some personalities portraits here and there. What was missing almost completely were the personal projects, which were in our opinion his strongest asset.

This is very common, and again, understandable; having the courage to sacrifice what puts bread on our table to favour some personal experiment is not easy.

But we strongly felt that Artur was ready to show what he was really capable of; the final selection of images that I sequenced for him on a mock website layout was a bare 15 pictures against the initial 50 something; there I could finally see Artur’s style emerging in all its uncompromising strength. As I told Artur, when a photographer has such a portfolio, people in the industry will know he’s able to deliver also more traditional work, while the opposite is often not true.

I hope the result of his magnificent portfolio has convinced him more than my words!

This is Artur’s testimonial on our work together:

“I was lucky to meet Raffaela at a moment when I was struggling to find who I wanted to be as a photographer: I wasn't really able to identify my strengths so I was throwing in the mix a little bit of everything hiding my most personal images behind commercial work and eye candies.

Without long talks, Raffaela was able to dig out my identity from that mess; by narrowing down my work to the most consistent and bold pictures she gave me the portfolio that I believe makes the statement. What's even more valuable for me - it gave me confidence and a sense of direction for my future projects. Working with Raffaela was a truly enriching experience.”